Matthew Hall
September 20, 2012
The Age
One day you’ll be able to walk into a store and the sales assistant will already know you and everything about you because of social media.
That is the Minority Report scenario facing consumers and retailers as businesses become more social, according to Angela Ahrendts, chief executive of fashion retailer Burberry.
Ahrendts was speaking at the opening of a 90,000-strong business love-in event by software company Salesforce.com called “Dreamforce 2012” in San Francisco overnight.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff delivers the keynote address during the Dreamforce 2012 conference at the Moscone Center on September 19, 2012 in San Francisco, California.
She said software tools made it possible for personal information, available publicly online through social media, to be leveraged in real time by retailers.
Sharing the stage with Commonwealth Bank’s chief marketing officer Andy Lark and Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, a string of executives sung the praise of “social business”.
Lark said Facebook had become the most effective marketing tool for the bank.
MC Hammer performs during the Dreamforce 2012 conference at the Moscone Center on September 19, 2012 in San Francisco, California.
Benioff announced “business is social” in his keynote address before unwittingly suggesting the corporate world was heading in the direction of Hollywood science fiction films – and not necessarily in a good way.
The implications of social media and social technology for enterprises were hammered home by Benioff after he was introduced to the stage by a surreal appearance from 1980s rap star MC Hammer.
Hammer, famous for his 1990 hit U Can’t Touch This, mimed a medley of songs including “Chatter Time”, a mixed reference to Chatter, a Salesforce product, and Hammer Time, the rapper’s 20-year-old tagline.
Shoes resembling a circuit board are worn by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff as he delivers the keynote address during the Dreamforce 2012. Photo: Justin Sullivan/AFP
“This social revolution that is going on right now, and we have been talking about for several years, is unlike anything that we have ever experienced before,” Benioff said.
“That social revolution is touching society, it is touching all of us, it is touching our personal lives, it is touching our companies.
Every aspect of our world is changing. That is the social revolution. That is why this is the most exciting thing to ever happen to our industry.”
Benioff highlighted a 2012 McKinsey Global Institute study that claimed 70 per cent of businesses today are using social technology. He also highlighted a 2012 IBM study that claimed 1709 chief executives thought that social media was among the most effective way to engage customers.
“This is something that we have to think about,” Benioff said.
Unsurprisingly, the keynote was used to launch several Salesforce social media products including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a result of purchasing two social technology products, Buddy Media and Radian6. The hybrid product plans to unify social listening, content, engagement, advertising, automation and measurement.
Another launch, Salesforce Work.com, is a human resources social tool that aims to eliminate the dreaded annual review for employees while Salesforce Touch is a product that put the cloud-based Salesforce software on mobile devices.
In a marathon three-hour address Benioff interviewed marquee customers on stage including General Electric, Coca Cola and Facebook.
With an eye on the potentially lucrative financial sector, Benioff pointed to how Australia’s Commonwealth Bank had used Salesforce marketing tools to boost its social media interactions.
“Marketing has probably been the most underserved function of the enterprise for decades,” CBA’s Lark said.
“This is not just a technology change,” said Robert Schmid, chief executive of video game publisher Activision, who explained how social media was driving interactions with customers. “This is a cultural and generational change.”
Salesforce claimed that more than 90,000 attendees – many of them using complimentary passes – were registered for this week’s event, numbers that swelled San Francisco’s regular population by about 10 per cent.
The conference has turned the city’s downtown area into a Salesforce carnival – or nightmare for any local residents not excited by computing software or road closures caused by the convention.
New York-based correspondent Matthew Hall is attending Dreamforce 2012 as a guest of Salesforce.
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